Communicating with a Menu Part 1

This article on NPR got me thinking about MENUS today. Specifically, it talks about the Language you use on the menu and what it says about the type of restaurant you are probably in.

I have a pretty good idea of what lower-level restaurant language looks like as these are the kinds of places I most often go to when I am in the States. They are the restaurants where BREAKFAST is served all day and you can get a patty melt or a French dip-- the so-called family restaurant, or, if I am lucky, the DINER. You know what this kind of menu looks like: LOTS of oversized laminated pages,  innacurate pictures of the food and a fizzing red cup of Coca-Cola or a steaming mug of hot coffee. Words like "savory," "mouth-watering", "served on a bed of iceberg lettuce,"  "build your own," and "griddle" are also solid indicators that you are in this type of place.

But you know all of this already. At least I hope you do, because if you do not have this culture, how can you TRULY appreciate the HIGHER-level restaurant that we will be talking about in my next post?

Yes, Reader. I want to talk about what makes a menu special in a really nice restaurant, say, the place you go once a year on GRANDMA's birthday and the meal is on HER. The kind of place where you start with a cocktail and END with a cup of coffee rather than drink it all during the meal.

I am going to use some of the menus I collected during the Summit to talk about what makes a menu part of the experience of eating out, and, at the same time, talk about what really makes a foreigner-friendly menu. We will use our Italian Michelin-starred chefs for inspiration.